Peter Foster is the Telegraph's US Editor based in Washington DC. He moved to America in January 2012 after three years based in Beijing, where he covered the rise of China. Before that, he was based in New Delhi as South Asia correspondent. He has reported for The Telegraph for more than a decade, covering two Olympic Games, 9/11 in New York, the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the post-conflict phases in Afghanistan and Iraq and the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.

After the rain, there are always rainbows

I had thought to write about the bombs in Jaipur, and all the emails I keep receiving from tour companies and the tourist board assuring me that it's "situation normal" in India. Do they really mean that?

A sunset rainbow over Golden Bay

Then came the earthquake in China, with my colleague Richard Spencer's harrowing account from Juyuan Middle School in Dujiangyan which reminded me of similar scenes in Balakot in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir four years ago.

Earthquakes are the worst of all natural disasters, in my experience. In the tsunami people either lived or died, but in earthquakes thousands of survivors are either left entombed to die or terribly maimed by falling floors and beams.

And after the initial searching their rises the sickly-sweet smell of decomposition which hangs heavy and nauseating over everything, a constant reminder of the death which the capricious forces of nature have left behind.

I was half-minded to have another crack at Burma, and observe how rapidly the news agenda is ceded to the next disaster. The junta is sacrificing tens of thousands of lives for their own egos, but the world's done its spot of hand-wringing and moved quietly on.

But in the end I've decided to put the disasters aside for the day and give y'all a break from the bombs and cyclones. If you want the details the papers and TV channels will be full of them.

So yup, you guessed it (in fact you probably didn't) but I'm taking you back to rainbows. I realise this is the third time I've posted a rainbow picture, but these are different again, and I for one have never seen a sunset rainbow.

The autumn here, as I have said before, creates magical light during the day, but also incredible sunsets, with colours that match the plush crimsons, oranges and yellows of the trees around here about now.

I don't quite know what it is about Golden Bay and rainbows. This one occurred just before sunset when it wasn't raining anywhere nearby and left us transfixed for the best part of 20 minutes before it expired.

If I were an artist I think I'd paint a series on rainbows. Van Gogh was fixated by his sunflowers, Monet obsessed with his water lilies, Turner endless drawn to paint his clouds…won't someone out there do a series on the Bay's rainbows?